Star Trek 679: Bounty

679. Bounty

FORMULA: (Canamar + Enemy Mine) + Blood Fever

WHY WE LIKE IT: First Tellarites!

WHY WE DON'T: Archer captured again. T'Pol sexpot again.

REVIEW: Archer gets captured for the umpteenth time (DRINK!), but at least this time it's a logical follow-up to Judgment. Having escaped from Rura Penthe, there's naturally a price on his head, one that a few bounty hunters are looking to collect. He's actually lucky to be nabbed by a Skalaar, a down on his luck trader only trying to get his cargo ship back with the reward money. He's no killer, and has been hurt by the Klingons often. So it's not very hard to turn him into an ally and get help escaping. And that escape is a lot more exciting than the one from Rura Penthe was, so there's that.

It's also out first look at the new Tellarites. Though we're told about how argumentative they are, we don't get a lot of that (nothing that doesn't seem natural from any characters in a similar story). The look is of course better than TOS' pig masks, but they're a homage to them nonetheless. Certainly, the eye holes are there is some form. I'd call the make-up a success without it being iconic.

Back on the ship, the B-plot concerns a microbe contracted by T'Pol that sets off her pon farr early. For fans of T'Pol as a sex kitten this is good news. For most viewers, it is not. She throws herself at Phlox, who is "withholding the cure", with little regard to the character's hard-earned dignity. It's a bedroom farce for the first half, and a lot of running around in her underwear for the second. At the end, she has no memory of what happened, which is at once convenient (no character consequences so long as it is never mentioned again) and ridiculous (no Vulcan remembers his or her wedding night?).

LESSON: Always bring an armed escort to the airlock.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: The randy comedy doesn't really work, but Archer's action scenes are at least exciting. And it was about time we saw the Tellarites.